The invention relates to a contact socket for an electrical pin-and-socket connector and which consists of a stable sleeve body, formed from sheet material, and a contact spring plug, located in this sleeve body and having a plurality of contacting means, such as contacting wires or contacting strips for forming a linear or strip-shaped contact with a contact pin, which is to be introduced into the plug, with the contact wires or contact strips of the contact spring plug being aligned twisted around the axis of the plug and connected at both ends with an edge strip of sheet metal, and with the contact spring plug being connected mechanically and electrically with the sleeve body.
Such contact plugs, frequently also referred to as wire spring plugs or laminar spring contact plugs, are known and are distinguished, on the one hand, by exceptionally outstanding contacting properties and, on the other, by the fact that they can be manufactured economically.
A first known construction of such a contact plug is characterized in that the contact spring plug has a number of contact strips, which are aligned, on the whole, obliquely to the longitudinal axis of the contact spring plug. Characteristic for contact plugs of this configuration is the fact that the contact spring plugs have a number of strip-shaped contacting means, which are formed from a number of contact strips, which are punched out from a continuous strip of a contact material and, at the upper and lower ends of the contact spring plug, remain connected with one another over edge strips. In connection with the use of strip-shaped contacting means, cut free from a contact material, it is furthermore known that the blanks, punched out from a continuous strip of material and rolled into a contact spring plug or a contacting lining of a stable sleeve body, can be cut to length from continuous strips of material along oblique cutting lines, and the two cut edges of the blank, forming the contact spring plug, can be connected with one another along a connecting line directed obliquely to the axis of the plug, in order to achieve an arrangement of the strip-shaped contact, which are aligned obliquely to the axis of the plug and twisted about the axis of the plug.
All such contact plugs for electrical pin-and-socket connectors have a certain disadvantage in that it is relatively expensive to connect the comparatively labile contact spring plug with a stable sleeve body into a usable contact socket, without disadvantageously affecting the contacting properties of the contact spring plug.
It is therefore an object of the invention to provide a contact socket of the above-described construction for electrical pin-and-socket connectors, which can be produced at a reasonable price and, on the one hand, ensures a secure anchoring of the contact spring plug in the stable sleeve body and, on the other hand, can also easily produce in mechanical serial production.
The object of the invention is achieved by providing a sleeve body having at least one free-cut element which extends transversely to the longitudinal axis of the contact plug, is formed by stamping, and positively engages with one of the two edge strips of sheet metal which connect the contact wires or contact strips of the contact spring plug with one another.
The inventive, strictly positive mode of connecting the contact spring plug and the stable sleeve body is distinguished, first, by the advantage that a reliable contact connection is formed and, nevertheless, all heat-dependent methods such as welding or soldering and the like, for mutually connecting the contact spring plug and the stable sleeve part can be dispensed with so that heat distortion or similar undesirable phenomena cannot occur. Furthermore, the strictly mechanical positive fixing of the contact spring plug in the stable sleeve body permits the contact plug, as a whole, to be manufactured by simply using cutting and molding tools exclusively. This favors the manufacture of contact plugs from continuous strips of material by punching out, with a stamping and/or cutting tool, one-part contact spring plugs from a continuous strip of material with a crimping part for connecting the contact plug to a strand to be subsequently rolled regionwise more or less completely in such a manner, that the regions of the free-cut elements forming the contact spring plugs, can be rolled into a cylinder body, and the regions of the free-cut elements, forming the crimp parts, can only be bent, for example, into a U-shaped cross section. The contact spring plugs, so pre-manufactured, are then connected, notwithstanding the retention of their connection with a transport strip, in a mechanically producible, positive manner, by mutually connecting claws and teeth of the full-cut elements and abutments of the stable sleeve bodies pre-manufactured by cutting sheet material to length and rolling it up so that a usable contact sleeve is obtained. The free-cut elements preferably, but not exclusively, are formed into the stable sleeve body, forming the contact spring plug. Of course, the reverse arrangement of this alternating arrangement of the free-cut elements and abutments also falls within the range of the present invention.
In a first embodiment of a contact plug, consisting of a contact spring plug and a stable sleeve body, the contacting means of the contact spring plug consists of a contact strip sequence stamped out of a continuous strip material and connected with one another at both ends over edge strips of the continuous strip material and held at constant mutual distances. Furthermore, the sleeve body has two free-cut elements spaced from one another in the axial direction and each of which is in positive engagement with one of the two edge strips, connecting the contact strips at both ends with one another. In particular, further provisions can be made so that the free-cut elements of the sleeve body, directed radially to the longitudinal axis, are formed by reed-shaped, inwardly directed, elements and, in each case, engage in a gap between adjacent contact strips of the contact spring plug, and positively engaging at the inner edge of the edge strip connecting the contact strips at both ends with one another.
In accordance with a second embodiment of a contact plug, consisting of a contact spring plug and a stable sleeve body, provisions can, however, also be made so that at least one of the two edge strips, connecting the contact strips of the contact spring plug at both ends with one another, is provided with a window recess, and the sleeve body has at least one reed, which is stamped out and is in positive engagement with the window recess.
The window recess advantageously is disposed in the edge strip opposite the free end of the contact plug and is aligned in the circumferential direction of the contact spring plug, so that the positive connection between the contact spring plug and the stable sleeve body is shifted towards the region of the connection between the contact plug and the strand.
An advantageous configuration of the positive connection between the contact spring plug and the stable sleeve body consists in that the window recess, which is formed between the edge strip of the contact spring plug opposite the free end of the contact plug, has a rectangular shape, and that two mutually opposite and inwardly inclined reeds, which are engaged positively with the narrow sides of the window recess, are stamped out in the sleeve body. This construction is advantageous particularly in the case where provisions furthermore are made that the two reeds, cut out in the sleeve body, are aligned pointing towards one another, and each of the two reeds is stamped out running out into one of the two longitudinal edges of the sheet material blank forming the sleeve body.